The Esquire Timeline // '32--'35

MARCH 1933. Visiting New York, Gingrich runs into Ernest Hemingway in a bookstore; Hemingway agrees to write an article for him. Gingrich begins dropping Hemingway's name to advertisers; ad sales begin.

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SUMMER 1933. The name "Esquire" chosen after the editor's secretary shows him a letter addressed to "Arnold Gingrich, Esq."

OCTOBER 1933. First issue of Esquire, with stories by Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett, Bobby Jones on golf, Gene Tunney on boxing.

1934.Commercial artist George Petty contributes eight drawings of "Petty Girls" the first year, and monthly thereafter. Seven years later, draws the "Memphis Belle" for Esquire, which is then painted on the fuselage of the famed World War II bomber.

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1935. Rodgers and Hart's efforts to stage a musical revue called "Esquire Girls of 1935" blocked because Smart was unfamiliar with Rodgers and Hart and feared to let "a couple of punks use our name and maybe louse it up for us."

The Esquire Timeline // '36--'42

< FEBRUARY 1936. F. Scott Fitzgerald's brutal confessional, "The Crack-Up," published in Esquire. Fitzgerald writes 43 fiction and nonfiction stories over seven years for the magazine, then dies at age 44.

> AUGUST 1936.Hemingway publishes "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in Esquire to settle an advance of $3,300, which he uses for a down payment on his fishing boat, Pilar. Later, Hemingway outfits the boat with machine guns to hunt Nazi subs in the Gulf of Mexico; finds none.

OCTOBER 1936. Esquire banned in Cuba for the article "Latins Are Lousy Lovers," by Helen Lawrenson.

1937. With sixfold increase in circulation in four years and profits of $1.5 million, Esquire goes public with stock on the American Stock Exchange.

1938. Accused of accounting irregularities, Smart and 11 other Esquire executives indicted by the SEC for stock-price manipulation.

MARCH 1938. Scribner's magazine publishes an article, "Sex, Esq.": "Esquire is the current phenomenon of the publishing business.... It is designed for the people who can't or don't read."

1939. On the advice of advertising agencies who felt Esquire was too Jewish, the publishers try to eliminate all Jewish bylines.

JANUARY 1942.Alberto Vargas replaces Petty as Esquire's pinup artist. Told that his drawings of "Varga Girls" (modeled after his wife, Anna Mae) are too athletic, Vargas finds a new muse, Jeanne Dean (above), an usherette at the Studio Theater in downtown Chicago. She is 15 years old.

AUGUST 28, 1945.Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth are the managers for the Esquire All-American Baseball Team game at the Polo Grounds, attended by 23,617 and televised nationally.

OCTOBER 1945. J. D. Salinger introduces character of Holden Caulfield in his second short story for Esquire, "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise." Publishes The Catcher in the Rye six years later.

FEBRUARY 4, 1946. In a landmark decision on censorship, U. S. Supreme Court rules unanimously for Esquire and against the Office of the Postmaster General, which had revoked the magazine's mailing permit, citing obscenities and "pandering to the prurient" in articles and illustrations, especially the Varga Girls.

MAY 1950.Esquire moves to New York. Hugh Hefner, an Esquire copywriter, remains in Chicago to start his own magazine, Stag Party, later renamed Playboy. In promoting first issue, Hefner writes, "It's being put together by a group of people from Esquire who stayed here in Chicago when that magazine moved east--so you can imagine how good it's going to be."

1957.E. Simms Campbell, the first black cartoonist to cross over to a white audience--whose drawings had appeared in every issue since 1933 and who created the magazine's mascot, Esky--moves to Switzerland, saying: "Man, I can walk into any joint I want out here and nobody starts looking as if they're thinking, 'Ugh, there's a nigger in here.' "

The Esquire Timeline // '58--'60

NOVEMBER 1958. Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's published in Esquire after being rejected by Harper's Bazaar because of obscene subject matter (editors assumed Holly Golightly was a prostitute) and use of words like bull dyke.

1958. Philip Roth sends literary editor Rust Hills one of his "Goodbye, Columbus" stories; Gingrich rejects the story, which he finds to be "too anti-Semitic."

JULY 1960. Diane Arbus's photojournalism published for the first time, in Esquire: "The Vertical Journey: Six Movements of a Moment Within the Heart of the City."

The Esquire Timeline // '60

NOVEMBER 1960. Norman Mailer's first piece of political journalism, "Superman Comes to the Supermart."

Mailer Apology Saga: Gingrich changes "Supermarket" in title to "Supermart." Mailer notices the change when he gets his check, which states the payment is for "Superman Comes to the Supermart." Calls his editor to tell him to change it back to "Supermarket." Editor agrees, but does not approach Gingrich, in part because he knows Gingrich doesn't like Mailer's story at all. Story is published with "Supermart."

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Mailer writes a letter to the editor, which is printed, telling the magazine that it has lost a "hot writer" because of the headline change, as well as for a couple other reasons (using a ten-year-old photo of him in "Backstage with Esquire"). A year later, Esquire names Mailer "White Man of the Year" in its first Dubious Achievement Awards.

Later, Mailer agrees to write for the magazine again--a story about Jackie Kennedy--but only if Esquire publicly apologizes. The intro to the story (for a special issue on women, July 1962) reads: ". . . He'd announced publicly that he wasn't going to write for Esquire anymore. His decision, he said, must stand 'unless Esquire is willing to admit in print that it treated me a bit cavalierly.' Nobody likes to apologize, but to bring our readers a hot writer like Norman Mailer we're certainly willing to. So . . . we admit, and in print, that we treated him a bit cavalierly--and welcome him back."

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JANUARY 1962. First appearance of The Dubious Achievement Awards. This photo and the caption "Why Is This Man Laughing" appear five times on five pages.

The Esquire Timeline // '62

JANUARY 1962. Esquire assigns photographer to surreptitiously shoot President Kennedy not for a news story but for a covert fashion portfolio. Shirts: "The President favors a vertical line to his collar points, rather than a horizontal spread, often chooses neat patterns and stripes and occasionally a tattersall." Pocket handkerchief: "President Kennedy swings toward the small triangular fold, placed slightly forward rather than in the middle of the pocket."

JUNE 1962. Gay Talese's profile of Joe Louis published--first in trio of classic profiles ("Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," April '66, and one that used its best quotation for a headline: " 'Joe,' Said Marilyn Monroe, Just Back from Korea, 'You Never Heard Such Cheering.' 'Yes I Have,' Joe DiMaggio Answered," July '66).

OCTOBER 1962. First of 92 Esquire covers designed by George Lois: Patterson vs. Liston, showing Patterson flat on his back in the ring. Magazine comes out two weeks before the fight. Inside, editor Gingrich writes, "We don't agree with its cover."

The Esquire Timeline // '63--'66

FEBRUARY 1963. Terry Southern's first piece of reportage, "Twirling at Ole Miss," published. Shortly after, Southern is assigned to interview director Stanley Kubrick; interview never runs, but Southern and Kubrick collaborate on script for Dr. Strangelove, which is released the following year.

DECEMBER 1965. Thomas Pynchon publishes an early portion of The Crying of Lot 49 in Esquire, titled "The World (This One), the Flesh (Mrs. Oedipa Maas), and the Testament of Pierce Inverarity." The full novel is published the following year.

OCTOBER 1966. John Sack's epic "M" published. Black cover featured only the words "Oh my God--we hit a little girl."

The Esquire Timeline // '68--'76

JULY 1969. Suggestions for first words to be spoken by Neil Armstrong when he lands on the moon. (Stanley Kunitz: "I shall never escape from strangeness or complete my journey. . . ." Congressman Ed Koch: "I proclaim the moon an international scientific laboratory." Bob Hope: "I'll be darned, it's made of cheese!")

NOVEMBER 1970. The first part of John Sack's "The Confessions of Lieutenant Calley"--the officer later convicted of killing 22 civilians at My Lai--is published as a cover story.

JUNE 1971. Raymond Carver's first short story in national magazine, "Neighbors," published in Esquire (followed in consecutive issues by his story "Hunter" and poem "Deschutes River").

1972. For a special issue on women, Hayes assigns a nonfiction piece to Judith Rossner about a schoolteacher who was murdered by a man she picked up in a singles bar. The story never runs, killed by the magazine's lawyers as the defendant is awaiting trial. Rossner reworks the story as a novel, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, published in 1975.

1976. John Milius's original script for Apocalypse Now adapted from Michael Herr's Esquire stories, without permission. Herr is then asked to write Captain Willard's voice-overs for the final version of the film.

SEPTEMBER 1978. Aaron Latham's "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy" published in Esquire; movie released in 1980.

JANUARY 1979. Jim Harrison's short story "Legends of the Fall" published in Esquire; expanded into a novella in 1983; becomes a movie in 1994.

The Esquire Timeline // '78--'01

1979. Guilty verdict for Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, who, as a Green Beret at Fort Bragg, murdered his pregnant wife and two daughters. Evidence included a blood-spattered 1970 copy of Esquire found at the murder scene containing a story on Charles Manson, which McDonald had used to make up a story that his family was killed by four intruders shouting, "Acid is groovy! Kill the pigs!"

1980. Columnist Harry Stein and future editor in chief Lee Eisenberg meet with Dan Okrent and others at La Rotisserie Francais restaurant and devise fantasy baseball game later known as Rotisserie League baseball.

DECEMBER 1982. Jodie Foster, former Esquire intern, publishes "Why Me?" about John Hinckley and the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

1987. For his role in Bright Lights, Big City, which is set partly at a New York magazine, Michael J. Fox interns in Esquire's research department. Catches major error in a recipe for blackberry pie that would have caused the pie to explode.

JUNE 1987. First "Women We Love," including Barbara Bush, Winnie Mandela, and the Guess Jeans girls.

OCTOBER 1998. First "What I've Learned": Rod Steiger. ("What you don't know will scare the shit out of you.")

2001. Esquire nominated for eight National Magazine Awards, a record for a monthly. It loses a record seven times.